I agree that the Presidential Fitness testing is not always relevant for the kids. In my high school PE classes, I test three different fitness areas that I believe will be important for each student for the duration of their life time. The first is the sit-n-reach to measure flexibility, the second is a pedestal test to measure core strength and the last is the mile run to measure cardiovascular endurance. While I do have to record the results and enter them on a spreadsheet manually, I feel it is a better measure of a student's fitness improvement than whether they reach a designated score.

Another problem I have with the Presidential Fitness Testing are the generalized scores that each student is required to reach. Therefore, I have developed my own sliding scale that requires each kid to improve by a designated amount based on their previous scores. The better they score, the less they are expected to improve, and vice versa. I feel that this allows kids of all fitness levels to set reachable goals and feel like by improving on previous scores that they are getting better, rather than having them not try because they know they will not likely reach the generalized Presidential Fitness score.

I have wrestled with this issue for many years in my PE classes. I started with the President's Challenge, switched to Fitnessgram, and then switched back to the President's Challenge. I found the Fitnessgram too time consuming. I also tried it when it was new and my computer skills were minimal. I might like it better now but I have reached a comfortable place with the President's challenge so not likely. I have middle school students. Our grade book grades on a 100 percentile grade. I have attached number values to the levels of the President's Challenge test but the lowest grade attainable is an 80 as long as I get their best effort. I devote a portion of my class each day to improving on each of these tests. I allow retests to those who are willing to work and improve their fitness. I have added the pacer and pedometers as an option to the mile run if they so desire however if they want to earn the badge that is offered by the President's Challenge then they need to do the mile. The result is that I get a genuine effort from most of my students on all the tests. Most want to try all the tests options offered. For example, all running tests, pull ups and push ups, curl ups and partial curl ups ect... When I say most I would estimate that means 90%.

I like the idea of using a sliding scale to grade them. I currently don't grade our students on their fitness scores, but like the idea of a sliding scale. The kids all want to know if they get graded and if they need to improve. It's a tough concept for me to explain because they are all different. I do grade them on their analysis and evaluation of their habits correlated to their scores and ways to improve etc. I"m looking for a software program that can manage all their data for 4 years. We have 6 different teachers obtaining data for our 1300+ students and it's become quite a paperwork nightmare. I know there has to be something out there that's easy to use and that can help with data analysis/printouts for my students. I welcome all your suggestions!

I teach 3 levels of high school physical education. We do a combination of both presidential and fitness gram testing. We use the mile, push ups, sit ups, shuttle run and sit n reach from the presidential scores and the pacer, pull ups and VO2 max from the fitness gram. We do a lot of cardio testing, but the mile and pacer scores should be close to the same if the student is not being lazy. Also the program we use will put the pacer and mile into the same calculation as the VO2 max and those numbers will also be close to the same if the student was giving their best effort. We also use trifit to enter our data and it will give us a print out of how are kids did. We can also print out their scores over the three years that we have them. We like this because they can see their progress. We send the forms home to get a parent signature and have them bring it back for a HW grade.

We are currently debating this very issue in my district. The President's Challenge is no longer being endorsed but Fitnessgram is. We are trying to convince our administration that Fitnessgram is the way to go. Fitnessgram seems to be much more user friendly, even for kids. I like the fact that you can get print outs for kids on exactly what areas they struggle in and common sense suggestions on how to improve the level of fitness that they struggle with. I really believe Fitnessgram is the way to go.

We use fitness gram at my high school. We use the pacer test, push-up test, cruncher test (not timed) and sit-n-reach. We record pre and post test and must submit it to the state as part of our teacher evaluation. I found that the students weren’t overwhelmed by the test and I saw a great deal of improvement throughout the first semester of the school year. In my experience if I mention the words mile run half the class had an instant asthma attack. I always add up how far they run during the pacer test and it usually is longer than a mile.

We just switched over to doing the Pacer test from the mile run as well and i feel that it has helped ease a lot of anxiety that my students were feeling when they knew the mile run was coming up. I teach elementary PE and we start the Fitnessgram test with our 5th grade students. What i like most about the Pacer test is that the strong runners in our classes are now the last ones to finish and enjoy having people watch them excel at what they do best, where as with the mile run our strongest kids finished first while the students who struggled always finished at the end and you could see how they hated finishing after everyone else. Definitely feel like the Pacer test has solved a lot of problems we had with students asking to go to the nurse or even not coming in on the day where they were supposed to run the mile.